Opening your website to user submissions can be a great way to fill in the gaps between your regular content schedules. It also provides you a great way to introduce new topics to the community through a different set of eyes and expertise. Once your site has begun to build momentum you will certainly receive unsolicited requests from agencies trying to push guest post content. More often than note – it’s a lot of junk. What you really desire is genuine content created by site followers and other authorities in the niche. How do you solicit quality user content? You … Continue reading

Thousands subscribed to your newsletter. Hundreds sharing your latest post on Facebook & Twitter. A growing list of customers. Multiple endorsements of your skills on LinkedIn. Plenty of reviews on Yelp. What makes none of these really matter? A lack of trust. Any business applying marketing strategies to their channels will certainly see interactivity from their industry (subscriptions, shares, purchases) – but does your company really have what it takes to be a trusted authority? If you were to remove all known presence of your business, online, would customers still seek what you have to offer? The topic I want … Continue reading

Over the weekend you may have heard news picking up about a new feature within Gmail which allows recipients to unsubscribe from marketing newsletters in a single click. The coverage, by ITWorld, detailed: Starting this week, a new, clearly marked “unsubscribe” link will appear at the top of the header field in marketers’ emails. Previously only appearing for a small percentage of users, the feature will now be made available for most promotional messages with unsubscribe options, Google said on Thursday. Email recipients do not need to take action for the links to appear. The case by Google, directed at … Continue reading

Where do we go from here? Throughout this week I want to take you from the very basics to a comfortable level with using YouTube in your business. We’ll start with an explanation of the platform and what it has to offer and move through the process of creating videos, gaining subscribers, monetizing the work, and now … growth. If you’ve made it this far into the series then you should already see some of the great returns YouTube has to offer even if you’re just now trickling in the traffic and subscribers. But now’s not the time to slow down. It’s … Continue reading

All this work with video and YouTube and you’re wondering the point of it all. First of all: building any community behind your brand is well worth the effort because it helps you become recognized in your industry. But let’s get down to why we’re doing this …. We want to make some money. All the content, all the production value, all the interactions, and all the effort – it’s there so you can share great information but more importantly … sell an offer. Throughout this week I want to take you from the very basics to a comfortable level … Continue reading

Now that you’ve overcome the hurdle of producing video you get to face a new challenge: getting views and gaining subscribers. Anyone can produce a video and upload it to YouTube but it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are going to watch it. You may get the one-off view here and there just because someone was stumbling through the site or happen to have found the video linked in search results. You really do need to treat YouTube much like your website – where you’re pushing offers, trying to build a following, and keeping it updated with fresh content. Throughout … Continue reading

It’s safe to say we all know YouTube. I won’t say we all know how to use it for business. This is because so many biz owners and marketers refrain from producing video because of some sense that it’s troublesome when, in reality, it’s actually quite easy. Throughout this week I want to take you from the very basics to a comfortable level with using YouTube in your business. We’ll start with an explanation of the platform and what it has to offer and move through the process of creating videos, gaining subscribers, monetizing the work, and growth. In part … Continue reading

YouTube should be one of the platforms you use in your affiliate marketing business. Video creation is actually quite easy. Videos are great content for your community. They’re also an excellent way to obtain passive income through affiliated products or services. Throughout this week I want to take you from the very basics to a comfortable level with using YouTube in your business. We’ll start with an explanation of the platform and what it has to offer and move through the process of creating videos, gaining subscribers, monetizing the work, and growth. To start things off you need to understand … Continue reading

An age old debate I still see on a regular basis is the question of how frequently you should publish content to your website and its blog. I’m a firm believer in the idea of writing at least 500 words a day but this doesn’t mean each one of those pieces are going to be published. In fact, there’s a whole lot of downsides to publishing too frequently. The same can be true if you take too long in between updates. Your challenge as a blogger is to find the happy medium. It’ll depend on your niche. It’ll depend on … Continue reading

Affiliate marketing is an industry which changes nearly every day. New strategies are discovered, changes to algorithms, players in the market, and more, are buzzing or on their way out. Having the ability to keep tabs on this information allows you to adjust your affiliate marketing strategy. You gain the benefit of riding trends. Keeping up-to-date with strategies will put you ahead of the curb and will lead to greater rankings. Of course, keeping up with all the news can be tedious and tiresome. Bouncing between multiple websites is inefficient especially when you have important tasks to complete. Luckily there … Continue reading